So here I am back from a trip of nearly four weeks in the USA. Before going I did consider a target of not gaining any weight, but faced with the hospitality that one enjoys across the pond I thought that it would be hard. more so with a lot of travel requiring meals at odd times and in airports and on the road. An what exercise could I expect? Let’s face it my American friends will drive between shops that are but 100 yards apart. Continue reading →

At some point earlier this week I walked off my 10,000th calorie, something of a milestone even if it is only an estimate of what I burn during my perambulations, but still a thing to savour for such achievements contribute to motivation. My next target, possibly to be achieved later today, is to pass the 100 kilometres walked mark (I am on 96.39 at the moment and even on a bad day 4km is fairly easy to manage). Continue reading →

With apologies to Cy Coben, whose words I have adapted, the following came to me on the 2115 from Paddington last night, partly with regard to my own plight, this have been my second jumper in 8 days and the third in a few months, Continue reading →

Well December is going see some changes, for on the 1st I can get rid of my Mo and then a week and a bit later will see the demise of Nora the Nasal Nodule as I have just had my revised appointment for her to be expunged from the end of my nose. I’ll be taking a picture of the Mo to post on the Movember pages before it comes off so there will be a shot of the two facial appendages that I’ll add here. Continue reading →

“I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die” has to be one of the most chilling lines in a popular song and, whilst many have sung it, it is the dulcet tones of Johnny Cash that deliver it best.

Death comes to us all for we all have but a short time here, and during that time we will encounter death along the way; as children we lose our pets and, perhaps older relatives and then as adults our parents and those of our partners so watching someone die is a reality we have to face. Continue reading →

Nora the BCC on my nose was due to have been surgically removed on the Thursday following my rather sudden admission to hospital with liver failure, and the operation was postponed on the basis that I might not have been able to have it. Continue reading →

Yesterday I found myself back at the Great Western Hospital. Not just there, but up on the third floor where my Mother spent so much time in her last 7 months or so and where she died in the end; poignant moments being back on that corridor. Continue reading →

It is a while since I have blogged here. Neglect has been due to so many other things going on in my life and this blog has been one of the things that has regularly fallen off the end of each day’s to do list as demands on my time arrive from all directions, not least the need to interact with the Wonder of Wokingham, but also chasing and winning, or otherwise, opportunities to earn a crust. Continue reading →

I have been trying to help someone who is, as I have had to, lined up for a series of operations. As something of a veteran now of hospital wards I have found my own way of coping, so another session I can meet with a degree of stoicism, but someone who is in for the first time? It does make me feel that I am playing Norman Stanley Fletcher to their b; the old lag and the innocent newcomer.

So how do I cope? My basic stance is to spend my time reconstructing various pleasurable trips abroad; my first time in the US (Atlanta 1993), riding the ICE from Hamburg to Hannover, the Monaco GP 1973, streaking under the channel in my car on the train, seeing California and so on. I have been lucky enough to have been around a bit and can dredge up these memories.

And there you have it; when I’m lying in a hospital bed trying not to worry about what happens when they take me down or later trying not to think of the discomfort, I can shut my eyes and transport myself to somewhere that a memory will take. Lie back and think of somewhere nice.